P853: XCITR and Chemical Information Sources: Two tools for instructors

Instructors who teach chemical information literacy topics and skills may be faced with a dearth of good examples. Instructors may also need help in honing their own search skills for locating chemical properties or spectra, or in performing sophisticated reaction searching. This presentation will cover two resources to help the busy chemical information instructor. The Division of Chemical Information (CINF) of the American Chemical Society and the Division of Computer-Information-Chemie of the German Chemical Society established a Collaborative Working Group to produce an international repository called XCITR (eXplore Chemical Information Teaching Resources). XCITR uses Web 2.0 technology and is a hub where instructors can deposit and access important teaching materials. We will discuss the history and organization of XCITR, describe technical details and provide examples of this free source. We will also discuss an informal collaboration among academic chemical information specialists to produce an open content textbook on principles of chemical information literacy using the Wikibooks publishing framework.